Administer your Linux server from your iPhone

The three-dollar app that lets you take control remotely

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Anyone who'd like to be able to securely administer their Linux servers from, say, Margate beach (and who wouldn't?) might be interested in a piece of software called TouchTerm, which is basically an SSH client and terminal emulator for the Apple iPhone.

TouchTerm includes a direct port of the OpenSSL and OpenSSH software to the iPhone and offers RSA/DSA key-based authentication and public key distribution via email.

It also includes an emulator for a VT100 terminal, giving you a standard command line interface and even enabling curses-based programs such as Vi and Top to be used.

(The VT100, for those of you too young to remember, was a character-based terminal made by Digital Equipment Corporation, which was popular around 1980. The control sequences of ASCII characters that the VT100 used for things such as cursor positioning became something of a de facto standard and is often supported by terminal emulators.)

There are additional screens for SSH key management and for editing server connections. (Once you've defined a connection you can connect with a single tap.)